Recent years have witnessed a growing need for a flat-panel display along with advances in the information society. Known examples of a flat-panel display include a non-self-light-emitting liquid crystal display (LCD), a self-light-emitting plasma display (PDP), an inorganic electroluminescent (inorganic EL) display, and an organic electroluminescent (hereinafter referred to as “organic EL” or “organic LED”) display. Among these flat-panel displays, the organic EL display has made particularly notable progress.
An organic EL display uses such known techniques as (i) a technique for displaying a moving image by a simple matrix drive and (ii) a technique for displaying a moving image by active-matrix driving of an organic EL element with use of a thin film transistor (TFT).
Further, there has been known a method of adjacently arranging, as a single unit, a set of (i) a pixel emitting red light, (ii) a pixel emitting green light, and (iii) a pixel emitting blue light. This method thus creates various colors such as white to display a full-color image. Preparation of such red, green, and blue pixels typically involves, for a conventional organic EL element, a method of separately painting individual organic light-emitting layers by a mask vapor deposition method that uses a shadow mask.
Patent Literature 1 discloses a method for carrying out a full-color display with use of a combination of (i) an organic EL element including a light-emitting layer that emits blue or blue-green light with (ii) a fluorescent material section that absorbs light emitted from the light-emitting layer and that emits visible fluorescence.
Patent Literatures 2, 3, 4, and 5 each disclose an organic EL element having an optical microcavity structure. Patent Literatures 3 and 4 each disclose a method of using, for each of a red pixel (R), a green pixel (G), and a blue pixel (B), a color converting section that absorbs light emitted from an organic EL element and that emits visible fluorescence. Patent Literature 2 discloses a method of causing (i) an organic EL element to emit light in the blue range, (ii) a green pixel to convert the emitted light in the blue range into light in the green range, and (iii) a red pixel to convert the emitted light in the blue range into light in the red range. Patent Literature 5 discloses an arrangement of disposing a light-emitting layer and a color exchanging layer in the middle of the space between a pair of light reflecting layers.